Posts About ‘Google’

Star Trek: The Original Series Google Doodle

Google yesterday placed a very cool doodle because of the 46th Anniversary of Star Trek. Star Trek was created by Gene Roddenberry and the first episode was broadcasted on September 8th 1966, after that 79 episodes followed (although 80 where made) and the show retired on September 2nd 1969. If you are a big fan of The Original Series you can explore space on the homepage and boldly go where no one has gone before.

It’s a interactive doodle with Captain James Tiberius Kirk played in the show by William Shatner at the front behind the console and left to him ‘live long and prosper’ commander Spock. At the right, next to the captain you can see Lieutenant Hikaru Sulu, in the series played by George Takei who later also played in the science fiction show Heroes. I guess the guy at the right is Montgomery Scott (Beam me up, Scotty) and between Scotty and Sula must be Leonard McCoy. (more…)

Friday Talk: Breakfast with Google’s Search Team

Did you ever have breakfast with a bunch of Googlers, being talked to by Amit Singhal? Well here’s your chance. Grab some breakfast, sit down push the play button and off you go!

Search Success Rates are Declining – don’t worry that’s a good thing

Search success rate is a funny old metric. At Experian Hitwise we define a “successful search” as a search which resulted in a click through to a website. This used to be a good measure of how competent search engines were at delivering relevant results to users – the theory being that if a consumer couldn’t find what they were looking for on the SERP they would have to make a further search to access the information they were after.

This was all well and good until search engines started getting smarter and realising that they could start offering information to us first hand. Let’s take a simple example of exchange rates. If I want to find out what the current exchange rate is between the pound and the euro and type “pound euro exchange rate” into Bing I don’t need to click through to a currency conversion website anymore, the search engine gives me the information I need directly. (more…)

Google’s “racial profiling” issue hints at invasive ad targeting

Yesterday Google was once again on the receiving end of bad publicity. An article in the Telegraph, one of the UK’s biggest newspapers, appears to show that Google uses racial profiling in its advertising algorithms.

A year ago a Huffington Post article appeared to show racial profiling at work in the ads Google shows alongside emails in Gmail. The Telegraph replicated this experiment recently in the UK, and it reports similar findings:

“The results were stark, and similar to the original experiment – for example, an email sent by “Robert Howe” saying “Need Cash” gets foreign exchange solutions for business advertised to him; the same email sent by “Segun Akinkube” gets offered Payday Loans. Neither of the ads repeated in each other’s preferences; Segun & Robert got completely different ads served to them, when all other factors were the same.”

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When Did You Last Google Your Name?

Ok, let’s be completely honest here. When was the last time you Googled your own name? Not too long ago, wasn’t it? And how often do you do what they call an ‘ego-search’? Probably more often than you are willing to admit.

Social Media Monitoring tool Trackur asked 725 people if they had Googled themselves within the last 24 hours. The response? A cracking 46% admitted to have done so.

Trackur followed the question up with the question who had Googled themselves in the past month and the number went even higher to a mere 73%. Less than 6% said they had never Googled their own name. (more…)

Google Penguin – 2.0 or 1.2?

During SES a couple of weeks ago, Matt Cutts warned of a significant update to Penguin in the not too distant future – something which drew a mixed response across the industry. Given the impact of Penguin on launch, one would have to suggest that those types of words would spread fear across the industry, it seems that this has been meant with more of a sense of gentle caution.

One of the words I have seen used was the words “propaganda” following Matts quote last week, something both Huomah founder, David Harry and fellow State of Search Editor Sam Noble were keen to suggest otherwise – and suggested that for many in the industry have been expecting this for a while. I think for many of us, now familiar with the iterative updates of Panda, a similar approach to Penguin is certainly not unexpected, and looking at a lot of the crap still in the SERPs there is obvious work for Googles algorithms still to do. (more…)

Yes, Google Was Down, Don’t Panic, Google is Cleaning

Some excitement on Social Media this morning, something which rarely happens seemed to be happening at the moment: Google seemed to be down for many. It was first noticed when Gmail couldn’t be reached, but it seems more Google products were down, even Google.com.

The ‘glitch’ took only about five minutes, but there immediately were responses on Social Media of people being worried about what was happening with Google. It showed once again how reliant people are on the Google services. The last time Gmail was down was in April when about 400.000 people were out of Gmail for about 2,5 hours. This time it was just a few minutes.

It could be that the outage had to do with the closing of some products by Google today. (more…)

New Options To Monetize Embedded Google Maps

If you use the Google Maps API on your website you can easily connect Google AdSense via the Maps Ad Unit so you can monetize your map. The Maps Ad Unit was introduced within the Maps Javascript API V3 four years ago. Google now added two new extensions to the Maps Ad Unit which means more choices to monetize your map.

The fist addition is the possibility to use a link unit instead of direct ads. As you might know a link unit consists of links / topics related to the content of the page. After clicking a link Google will show a separate page with relevant ads. Note that as a publisher you will get paid for clicks on the ads on the separate page, you will not get money for clicks on the topics itself. (more…)

Reputation management – Shady business or just great SEM?

Reputation management. A part of SEM that few want to admit that they do. Looked upon as shady business. Many thinks it is about removing search results or creating black-hat`ish spam to dominate the SERPs. But is it really shady business? N-O, not if you do it for the right reasons.

Reputation management is all about controlling the top 10 for brand related searches. Because your online reputation = your top 10 in Google. It is almost that simple.

In my opinion, reputation management is smart SEM that most companies (and also all people if you ask me) need to do, bad reputation or not. It is SEM with the goal of avoiding bad search results if, or when, the shit hits the fan. Reputation management is also the work to increase your overall online presence, aka. “traditional SEM”. It is controlling the SERPS for brand related searches, before someone else does it. Reputation management is all about a broad presence of great online content, content so strong and relevant that negative news stories, blog posts or forum threads can`t outrank them for brand related searches. It is what SEO and paid search should be all about; relevance and great content.

With that in mind, here`s my 8 most basic tips for reputation management, that anybody can do. No shady business, just relevant content! (more…)

Multinational and multilingual sites: Google’s Pierre Far discusses

Google’s engineer Pierre Far has been very active in the past year being an advocate for Google and for ‘Good SEO’. He has been speaking on many different conferences, he has been active on Google+ and he has been doing a lot of Webmaster Central “Office Hours” hangouts.

In these hangouts Pierre (or another Googler) discusses a specific topic. He explains what Google is doing and he answers question. A very informative way of connecting to the search industry. If you ever have the chance on joining one of the hangouts I would suggest you do, it can be informative.

Last week Pierre Far had a Webmastercentral Hangout about a topic which has been on the agenda for many lately: multinational and multilingual sites. You can watch the hangout below. (more…)